Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/84

 Has made an otherwise insensate waste Of ages overthrown A ruthless, veiled, implacable foretaste Of other ages that are still to be Depleted and rewarded variously Because a few, by fate's economy, Shall seem to move the world the way it goes; No soft evangel of equality, Safe-cradled in a communal repose That huddles into death and may at last Be covered well with equatorial snows— And all for what, the devil only knows— Will aggregate an inkling to confirm The credit of a sage or of a worm, Or tell us why one man in five Should have a care to stay alive While in his heart he feels no violence Laid on his humor and intelligence When infant Science makes a pleasant face And waves again that hollow toy, the Race; No planetary trap where souls are wrought For nothing but the sake of being caught And sent again to nothing will attune Itself to any key of any reason Why man should hunger through another season To find out why 'twere better late than soon To go away and let the sun and moon And all the silly stars illuminate A place for creeping things, And those that root and trumpet and have wings, And herd and ruminate, Or dive and flash and poise in rivers and seas, Or by their loyal tails in lofty trees Hang screeching lewd victorious derision Of man's immortal vision.